


(When Everything Breaks) You Are The Anchor That Holds Me

by CryptoHomoRocker



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Hand Jobs, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, Memory Loss, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Schmoop, Sharing a Bed, Steve Rogers Is A Noble Unicorn, lots and lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 06:36:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1769260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryptoHomoRocker/pseuds/CryptoHomoRocker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Steve is the one thing Bucky hasn’t had to make up his mind about."</p><p>Or: Bucky has feelings, Steve has feelings, and then they have sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(When Everything Breaks) You Are The Anchor That Holds Me

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a quick and dirty PWP thing, but I ended up running my mouth about supersoldier boyfriend feelings for over 5000 words. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but at least the dicks actually touch this time. Title is from "My Favourite Book" by Stars.

Words come back to Bucky slowly.  The last ones to arrive are _I want._

He and Steve are in bed together when it happens, in Steve’s room.  Bucky has his own bedroom down the hall, with his own bed—and how strange that he has things now, things he can keep—but he rarely sleeps there.  He’s been out of cryo long enough now that he realizes the nightmares will come no matter where he is, but somehow waking up with Steve’s hand on him, his voice murmuring “shh, it’s okay, I’m here, you’re safe” in his ear, makes them fade away faster than they do when he sleeps alone.  And he can fall asleep more easily with Steve’s arms around him, wrapped in sheets that carry his clean, warm scent.

He is not having a nightmare now, and they aren’t sleeping.  Steve is sitting up, reading a book he borrowed from Sam, while Bucky is just… sitting.  He knows Steve gets uncomfortable sometimes when he sees him doing nothing, maybe because it reminds him that the old Bucky—the fast talker, the charmer, the one who always wanted to go somewhere and do something—isn’t really there anymore.  But Bucky likes the peacefulness of knowing that he is awake and alive and can sit in silence for as long as he wants.  It’s something he didn’t get much of during the war, and certainly not later, when Zola and HYDRA took him apart and turned him into a weapon.  Steve understands that, he thinks, at least enough not to mention it anymore, and so Bucky sits, watching his face as he reads.  The swift way his eyes dart from word to word.  The muscles moving slightly in his face as he reacts to what he’s reading.  The steady movement of his hands as he turns a page.  (The beat of his pulse in his throat, the Winter Soldier whispers, a ghost in his own head.)  His mouth curves slightly as he reads something nice, or maybe funny, and suddenly something curls and coils in Bucky’s stomach.

He can’t remember what the feeling is at first, which means that it’s not one he’s had a chance to remember yet.  He spent so long feeling nothing that everything after his deprogramming has been a surprise.  The first time he cried he wondered if he was getting sick.  The first time he felt fear he was sure that he’d been compromised by the enemy, and had to curl up into a ball in the smallest cupboard he could fit into.  He searches the memories still available to him and comes up with one that still seems relevant: Steve, the smaller Steve, flush with fever sweat but sleeping the kind of sleep that means the worst is over, tucked into a bed he recognizes as his own from childhood.  He doesn’t know how old he is in this memory, or have any context for it, just the dizzy swoop and dive as he leans forward and kisses him, one eye on his bedroom door in case his mother walks in.

He chases the feeling and another memory emerges from the fog in his brain: his hands fisted in white sheets, Steve braced over him, their bodies joined together and slick with sweat.

_Oh._

He turns to Steve and says, “Hey.”  He has learned to speak before touching Steve, because good as that Erskine-enhanced hearing is, Bucky no longer makes noise when he moves, and he doesn’t want to scare him.  Steve turns to look at him, his mouth still curved from whatever he was reading, and Bucky kisses it.  Kisses _him_.  He tastes minty and soft, and he accepts the kiss passively, not rejecting but not quite reciprocating either.  One of his hands settles on the side of Bucky’s face, a thumb smoothing cool circles over his cheekbone.  It rests there even when Steve pulls away, a flush rising on his fair skin.  His face is curious and soft, and Bucky likes it.

After waking up, it took Bucky a long time to realize that he has preferences—that some tastes are good to him and some are bad, that some kinds of music make him happy and others make him weak and panicked.  The Winter Soldier didn’t have likes or dislikes, just orders.  He didn’t care about the cool, sweet burst of a grape between his teeth or the intricate up-and-down chase of jazz drums.  Understanding that he doesn’t have to accept everything, that he can request or refuse, is heady and frightening.  Sometimes he wishes he didn’t have to.  Liking things, or disliking them, is a lot of responsibility.  It means that he has to think about everything.

Liking Steve has never felt that way.  He’s the one thing Bucky hasn’t had to make up his mind about.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve says softly.  He is smiling, and there’s a look in his eyes that Bucky does not know how to name.  He’s seen it before, he thinks.  “What’s going on?”

“I like your face,” Bucky blurts out.  It’s not what he intended to say, even though it’s true.  “I like you,” he amends, and frowns.  That’s not what he means either.  People have more words to use than weapons.

Steve laughs softly, still touching.  His fingers make that something in Bucky’s stomach spark and flare, and he leans into them so Steve will know.  “I like you too,” he says.  “You mook.”

That’s not a word Bucky knows anymore, but Steve says it fondly, so it must be a good one.

“I want,” he starts, then stops, frustrated.  He doesn’t know how to ask.  They’ve kissed before since he came back for good—gentle, careful kisses that Bucky always initiates, because kissing Steve is one of the few things that still feels natural.  But Steve never tries to take it any further, always keeps his hands to himself and his mouth closed, and Bucky doesn’t understand how to make him understand that that’s not all he needs.  Tears prickle suddenly at his eyes and he hisses in irritation, swiping them away with his right hand.  He can’t cry right now.  Steve tends to panic when he cries.

“What do you want, Buck?” Steve asks.  He must have noticed the tears, but he doesn’t say anything about them, and Bucky is desperately grateful for that.

Bucky looks at him and tries to tell him with his eyes, the way Steve sometimes tells him things with his, but it’s not working.  Steve just looks puzzled and concerned and Bucky hates that, can’t stand being treated so carefully, and he reaches out and grasps Steve by the shoulders hard enough to bruise, pulling him down on top of him.  His weight and his warmth press down on Bucky, and that feeling is spreading now, through his body and between his legs, fizzing in his brain.  It’s such an unexpected sensation that he laughs, and Steve looks down at him with surprise before smiling cautiously.

“Bucky?” he says, a question with no answer.  One hand threads through Bucky’s hair, longer and softer than it had been the last time they did this—and there was a last time, he can remember it, and anyway the press of their bodies is too familiar for this to be the first time.  Bucky hums and presses into the touch, each fingertip burning into his scalp like a brand.  “You’re gonna have to use your words here, pal, I don’t—“

“I want,” Bucky says, and he seems to get stuck on those two words, repeating them in an endless loop.  “I want, I want, I want…”  He shakes his head to clear it and tries to angle his head to kiss Steve, but Steve jerks away slightly, just out of his reach.

“No,” he says firmly.  There’s a tone in his voice that would have affected Bucky differently even a few months ago, would have made him go limp and obedient, but now he just whines and cranes his neck, trying to reach his mouth.  “We’re not gonna do it like this, okay?  If you want… what I think you want”—and here he visibly swallows, Bucky watches his throat work, wants to bite and mark it for his own—“you need to tell me.  I have to hear you say it, Buck, you understand?”

Bucky shakes his head and tries to kiss him again, but Steve is too high up, his lips just an inch too far for him to catch with his own.  He doesn’t know how to say it, he wants Steve to just know, it’s too hard to speak with his face right above him.  He turns away into the pillow, shutting his eyes tight.

“Bucky?” Steve says again, his voice concerned now.  When he speaks Bucky can feel the words buzz right through him, under his skin.  “Hey, it’s okay, if you don’t want to talk about it-“

“I want you to fuck me,” Bucky says, so low he’s not even sure Steve can hear it until he goes stiff and still above him.  He doesn’t know if he’s responding to the profanity or to the request.  “I remember, it was dark and, and we were in your bed, and I want that.  Like you did then.  Please.  Please.”

He even remembers the please.  In other circumstances he would be very proud of himself.

Steve does not say anything at first.  Bucky keeps his eyes shut tight and waits for him to leave, sure he’s ruined it.  Instead he feels Steve’s mouth pressing a kiss to his throat.  His lips run hot as the rest of him, and the kiss is searing.  Steve’s hands slide down along his shoulders and sides, light touches that he can feel as though the thin T-shirt he wears to bed isn’t even there.  He cracks open an eye and sees Steve gazing down at him, that look in his eyes again.  Bucky remembers that now, too, can picture it in his mind’s eye—Steve with his mouth slightly open, his pupils blown and his hair soaked with sweat, staring down at him like he’s the best thing he ever saw.

“You’ve got to tell me if I do something you don’t want me to do, okay?” he says.  He reaches down to tuck an escaped strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear.  “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you, Bucky.  But you have to let me know if- if there’s anything that you don’t like.  Promise?”

Bucky nods, too tapped out from asking to use words.

Steve kisses him first this time, and there’s nothing chaste about it—his lips are parted, his tongue sliding wet and hot into Bucky’s mouth.  This is new, this is different, but it’s somehow also something he knows, the warm velvet of Steve’s mouth beautifully familiar.  He clutches at his shoulders to pull him closer, belatedly remembering his metal hand when Steve hisses in pain.  He hadn’t had to worry about that last time.  He lets go immediately, pulls out of the kiss.

“Sorry,” he pants.  “I forgot-“

Steve shakes his head and presses his mouth to his again, biting Bucky’s lower lip just a little.  Bucky’s hips jerk upwards at that, and a sound comes out of his throat that he doesn’t think he intended to make.  Steve is hard against him, and he jerks his hips again, enjoying the sensation of them sliding together.  Steve moans into his mouth and pulls away.

He looks down at Bucky, long, thick lashes shadowing his eyes, and says, “Strip.”

There’s still a part of him that hears an order and wants to obey.  But that’s not the part of him that’s in control anymore, not most of the time, and Bucky does not strip.  “I don’t want to,” he says, realizing that it’s true as he says it.  “I want you to do it.  You, then me.”

Yes, that feels right—Steve peeling off Bucky’s shirt and then his own, baring his skin to the dark.

Steve’s smile is wide and bright, and Bucky suddenly realizes that he had been testing him, making sure he could still disobey a direct command.  He does that sometimes; it used to make Bucky think that he doesn’t trust him, like he’s afraid he’ll snap back into the Winter Soldier.  Now he thinks it means that Steve wants to make sure Bucky’s with him and not hidden inside himself somewhere, the way he was for the longest time when he came back.  “Just like old times,” he says, a teasing note creeping into his warm voice.  “Still a spoiled brat.”

He sits up and pulls his shirt up over his head, turning so he can throw it directly into the laundry hamper in the corner of the room.  His boxers follow seconds later.  Looking at him, the smooth, fair lines of his body golden in the light from the lamp, makes Bucky dizzy.  It seems that he can see both Steves here right now, the small, slender one from his memories and the one that Erskine’s serum made, so different in size but matched up in the details—the wide eyes and soft mouth, the long, slender hands and the blonde hair that tumbles messily across his forehead without pomade to keep it in place.   They are both beautiful, so beautiful.  Steve shuffles back a little, his blue eyes sparking.  He doesn’t say a word as he takes off Bucky’s clothes, achingly slow and gentle.  His fingers brush Bucky’s skin only incidentally, but he shivers at the contact anyway.

There’s a moment when he’s lying there, bare and exposed, and it all feels suddenly, horribly familiar.  On his back, someone else’s hands on him, vulnerable and unmoving.  He would have reacted to that before, either started swinging or tuned himself out and let the Winter Soldier take over, but now all he has to do is focus on Steve’s eyes, the soft, intent look on his face and the dirty crook of his mouth.  Steve will not let anything bad happen to him.  He said, and Steve is always honest.

He looks at Bucky for a long time, his eyes roving over his body like he does when he draws, memorizing lines and shadows, drinking in the details.  “Jeez, Buck,” he says softly, and there’s a roughness in his voice that makes Bucky’s breath catch a little.  “I forget sometimes, you know? How gorgeous you are.”

That makes his face burn, but before he can say anything Steve is back on top of him, straddling him easily.  Bucky can feel him pressing against his upper thigh, an insinuating nudge.  Their skin is touching in so many places now and Bucky can add this to the list of things he likes, along with orange juice and walks at night and the smell of cut grass.  Steve leans down over him and kisses him again, his hands drifting up and down his body.  It could almost tickle, except that Bucky isn’t ticklish.  (Had he been before?  He makes a mental note to ask Steve that at some less interesting time.)  He turns his head into Steve’s shoulder and nips, less gently than he really means to, and is rewarded by a sharp hiss and a noise that makes Bucky’s toes curl.

“Touch me?” he asks, hoping that he’ll understand what he means.  Steve nods, kisses Bucky again and then leans back as his hand begins to move, tracing a little pattern down Bucky’s chest and abdomen, resting for a few long seconds on the dark cushion of hair before reaching further and taking hold of him.

The curl of his fingers makes Bucky shudder and gasp, and for a minute or two he wonders if he’s going to black out.  He’s touched himself like this a few times since coming back, but always experimentally, trying to figure out what he likes and what he doesn’t.  Steve seems to already know.  He jerks him steady and hard, his thumb tracing circles over the head, playing with the slit.  He pulls away once to lick his hand, making sure Bucky sees him do it—it’s not perfunctory, it’s slow, teasing, just this side of a show.  Bucky’s cock twitches and he knows Steve can feel it.  Steve just grins and keeps touching him, his free hand roaming over Bucky’s stomach and chest, little points of magic and heat swirling under his fingertips.  Something he does with his hand makes Bucky’s legs jerk, and that feeling in his stomach becomes something else, a surging need to have Steve press into him and open him up, fill him.

It takes him a minute to be able to articulate that, with the hot slide and squeeze of Steve’s hand distracting him, but after a moment he’s able to touch his arm.  Steve stops immediately, waiting for him to speak.

“I don’t want to come yet,” he says.  “Not without you.”

He turns aside and fumbles in Steve’s night table drawer for condoms and lube, things he knows are there because on his first day in the apartment he looked in every drawer and every cupboard, trying to gauge his safety.  The bottle of lube is almost full, but not quite, and Bucky’s movements slow as he wonders who Steve’s been here with before, who else has been splayed out beneath him in this bed.  Thinking about it sends a hot spike of jealousy through him, an odd counterpoint to the desire curling in his veins.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, trying to be firm.  He is here now, and Steve’s pressing into him like there’s no one else in the world.

He struggles to open the lube, intending to slick up his fingers and prep himself, but Steve takes it from him before he gets the cap off.  “Can I?” he asks.  One of his hands is still on Bucky’s skin, rubbing idly, like he can’t help himself.

Bucky doesn’t trust himself to speak at that, because the thought of Steve’s hand inside him makes his throat dry up.  He nods instead, shifting under him to get into position as he watches him coat his fingers.  Like before, it’s a show, slow and teasing, and Bucky can’t help but laugh.

“Captain America’s a damn tease,” he murmurs, and Steve grins back.

“That’s my secret,” he agrees, and slides a hand between Bucky’s legs.  The lube has already warmed to his touch, but Bucky still flinches when he feels the slippery pressure against his hole.  Steve stops and looks at him.  “You good?” he asks, his voice soft.  When Bucky nods again he presses on, one finger slowly sliding into Bucky’s body.

Bucky frowns and shifts, adjusting.  He doesn’t actually remember what any of this feels like, just that it felt good when he did it before, and the reality of it is a little disappointing.  It doesn’t feel bad, exactly, it just doesn’t feel much like anything.

“Maybe more fingers?” he suggests.  Steve nods and slides in a second finger, and that’s nicer, the stretch an interesting complement to what he’s already feeling.  He works himself down on Steve’s fingers, humming at the sensation of them crooking and moving inside of him.

Then Steve does something strange with his hand, pushes further in and twists, and suddenly it’s like Bucky’s whole body is alight.  He breathes in sharply, his hips snapping upwards.  Above him Steve is still smiling.

“There we go,” he says.  He begins to fuck Bucky with his fingers the same way he’d been jerking him off before, steady and hard.  Bucky curls his legs around his back, trying to pull him further in.  Every few seconds Steve’s fingers brush that one spot inside him and he jerks, keening.  He keeps his eyes open no matter how much they want to flutter closed, needing to see the expression on Steve’s face: intense, intent, beautiful and hungry.  He adds a third finger, increasing the stretch, but it’s not enough, and Bucky fumbles blindly for the foil packet abandoned in the sheets beside him.  He tears it open—he figures Steve’s fingers will be too slick to do that himself—and sits up a little to slide it onto Steve.  He is suddenly aware as he does it that this is the first time all night he’s touched him there, and a surge of guilt washes through him.

“Do you want me to…?”  He doesn’t know how to finish the question, so he lets his fingers do it for him, trailing suggestively down the length of Steve’s cock.  Steve gasps and flushes, but shakes his head.

“No,” he says.  He takes Bucky’s hand and kisses it, a hot press of mouth to palm.  It’s a simple thing, a little thing, and it makes Bucky feel like he’s going to come apart at the seams.  “I know exactly what I want to do, Buck.”

As he says that he withdraws his fingers, twisting them again on their way out, and Bucky feels too boneless to sit up anymore.  He falls back against the pillow, watching as Steve slicks himself up.  Steve notices him watching, and a minute frown creases his brow.

“Do you want to go on your knees?” he asks.  “I know this is how we used to do it, but it’s been a while.  Might be easier for you.”

Bucky considers the question.  He doesn’t know what it will be like at all, really.  Steve could be right—it might be easier the other way.  But then he wouldn’t be able to watch Steve’s face, and he needs to do that, needs it in a way that goes beyond the ache in his cock and the pull and burn in his stomach.  He shakes his head.

“This way’s good,” he says, and tugs Steve forward with his legs.  He can feel him lining himself up, and then he pushes slowly and carefully inside.

It’s a lot to take, and Bucky tenses up without wanting to.  A part of him thinks of this as intrusion, conjures up visions of bone saws and scalpels and being taken apart by strangers’ hands.  He looks at Steve to make his muscles relax, Steve whose eyes have fallen shut and whose mouth has fallen open, his face a blissful mask of happiness and surprise.  They stay still for a long moment, Steve bracketing Bucky with his arms as he breathes deep and adjusts to the sudden, urgent press of Steve’s cock inside him.

Bucky knows that Steve won’t start moving until he lets him know that he’s okay.  He tries pressing down a little bit, and Steve makes a hot, desperate noise in the back of his throat that makes his breath hitch.  He rolls his hips carefully, like he’s testing him again, and somehow it shoots through Bucky’s entire body, hot and white.  He can hear himself whimper.  Both his fists are balled up in the sheets, the way they were in that one flash of memory.  Steve notices too and smiles, his hands tightly gripping Bucky’s hips.  Not tight enough to hurt, though, because Steve is careful, so careful.

“Just like old times,” he says again, and he begins to move.

Bucky didn’t remember the way this feels, and he’s glad, because if he had he might not have asked for it again.  It’s so much, the stretch and burn, those hot little pulses that make him shudder when Steve presses up inside him just right, and he keeps thinking he’s going to get overwhelmed and blank out.  But he can’t, he won’t let that happen when he’s with Steve like this, and whenever he feels that pull that means he’s going under, he forces his eyes open wider, traces the muscles in Steve’s shoulders, pulls him down to lick into his mouth.  There’s a fine trembling working through his muscles and a tight, warm burn gathering in the pit of his stomach.  He doesn’t want to go away.  He wants to be here while this is happening. 

“Do you like this?” Steve asks him, panting, and Bucky can’t decide if he’s trying to talk dirty or if he really wants to know, so he just moans into his shoulder, trying to angle his hips to get Steve deeper inside of him.  Steve laughs, a breathless little sound, and reaches for his cock, touching him in time with his thrusts.  Somehow it hadn’t occurred to Bucky to combine the two, and he briefly thinks that Steve is a genius before that spot inside him gets touched again and he can’t think, just shiver and thrash and curse in as many languages as he knows.  Steve’s hand is firm and hot, his body solid and heavy, and Bucky feels like he’s being pinned to the mattress.  He likes the weight pressing him down, and that’s… unexpected, after all the other times he’s been held in place.  But this is different, there’s no pain here and nobody trying to make pain happen.  And he’s with Steve, and that is the safest thing he knows.

“I feel safe,” he gasps out.  It might not be the right time to say this, but he needs to.  Maybe this is what he’s been trying to say with all of this.  “With you, Stevie… you make me feel safe.”

And God, the way Steve looks at him then, that same look he remembers like Bucky’s the best thing he’s ever seen.  He leans down, kisses Bucky’s mouth, his throat, bites gently at the place where his shoulder meets his neck.  He noses along his shoulder to the join of flesh and metal and Bucky almost freezes, almost stops breathing.  They don’t talk about the arm much—Steve because he feels guilty about it, like it’s tangible evidence of him failing Bucky somehow, and Bucky because he knows that that’s how Steve sees it and he doesn’t want him to feel horrible things on his account, not anymore.  But now Steve’s touching it, kissing it gently, running his tongue along the seam, and it makes Bucky feel closer to coming than anything else has.

“Shit, Steve,” he hisses, arching up toward his mouth.  He knows that Steve doesn’t like profanity but he just can’t help it.  The slide of his tongue along the scar tissue is strange and hot and perfect and he wants it to keep going but he can feel himself getting too worked up to last.  Steve hums in response and catches his mouth with his, his kiss messy and wet and full of teeth.  He’s moving more quickly now, his hips snapping desperately as his hand jerks Bucky’s cock harder and faster.  It’s all out of time and uncoordinated, their rhythm lost in a frantic meeting of flesh.  He’s coming undone, everything driven out of him but the need to pull Steve deeper into him, to have his body pressing him down forever.

He likes it, he likes it, he likes it so much, and he comes chanting Steve’s name like a prayer, white heat flooding through him and making him drift.  It nearly sends him under, but somewhere through that warm haze of pleasure he feels Steve start to tense up and he fights his way back up and opens his eyes.  He wants to watch Steve fall apart above him.  Sweat has darkened his hair and made him shine, and when he meets Bucky’s eyes he smiles like he doesn’t know he’s doing it.  His face is dazed and lovely.  Bucky looks at him, shifts and clenches, pulling him in deeper, and Steve comes with a strangled moan, pressing his face against Bucky’s shoulder as he shudders and empties himself out.  Bucky holds onto him through the aftershocks and mouths at his jaw, tasting salt.  They lie tangled together, breathless and spent.

“God,” Steve whispers.  He’s not even taking the Lord’s name in vain, Bucky realizes, he’s saying it like an affirmation.  He pulls himself up awkwardly, his arms a little shaky.  “I’ve missed this so much, Buck.”

He pulls out and ties up the condom, throwing it into the waste paper basket as easily as he’d thrown their clothes before, and reaches over to the nightstand to grab a handful of tissues.  He cleans them both off as best he can—they’ll need to shower later anyway, but for now Steve seems content to deal with the worst of the mess and then lie down next to Bucky, curling up easily around him the way he does when they go to sleep.  They’re face to face, and Bucky is glad.  He wants to look at Steve like this, relaxed and happy and beautiful, for a long time.

A memory surfaces behind his eyes: the two of them curled up in a tent, face to face just like this, the smell of sex and sweat soaked into their clothes.  Steve’s eyes huge and shining in the dark, his mouth catching Bucky’s for soft, slow kisses while his hand curls around the back of his neck.  Bucky had not been close to fine even then, had already struggled through Basic and the army and Zola’s table, but Steve had held onto him and soothed him and made everything… not better, not gone, but bearable.  Like he was still human.  The warmth of him in his bedroll had surprised him.  Little Steve had always been cold, needed Bucky to be the big spoon and drive away the chill.  The serum had switched their places, both his and Steve’s, because after Zola he always felt winter humming through his veins.

He doesn’t now, though.

“How often did we do this?” he asks when he gets his breath back.

Steve smiles lazily.  “I dunno,” he replies, and, absurdly, presses a kiss to the tip of Bucky’s nose. “A lot.  I never kept count.”

Bucky smiles back, still savouring that flash of memory.  “I hate that they took all that away,” he whispers, reaching out to trace a thumb over Steve’s lips.  “I wish I could get it all back.  Remember everything.  For you.”

Steve catches his thumb between his teeth and bites it lightly, waiting for Bucky’s sharp intake of breath before he lets it go.  He cups the nape of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky closes his eyes.  There’s nowhere that Steve has touched that isn’t good and warm and a thousand miles away from pain and ice.

“I got you back,” Steve says.  “That’s all I need.  We can make up the rest as we go along.”

Steve is always honest.  This thought stays with Bucky as he falls asleep to the rhythm his fingers are stroking into his skin.


End file.
